Gilian The Dreamer Part 19

CHAPTER XIX--LIGHTS OUT!

AS he spoke he staggered to the side, and would have fallen but for his sister's readiness. About that tall rush of a brother she quickly placed an arm and kept him on his feet with infinite exertion, the while uttering endearments long out of fashion for her or him, but come suddenly, at this crisis, from the grave of the past--the past where she and Dugald had played as children, with free frank hearts loving each other truly.

"Put me to my bed," said he again thickly, and his eyes blurred with the utmost weariness. "Put me to my bed. O G.o.d! what is on me now? Put me to my bed."

"Dugald! Dugald! Dugald!" she cried. "My darling brother, here is Mary with you; it is just a turn." But as she said the flattering thing her face was hopeless. The odour of the southernwood on the window-sill changed at once to laurel, rain-drenched, dark, and waving over tombs for the boy spellbound on the floor. All his shameful perturbation vanished, a trifling thing before the great Perturber's presence.

The brothers went quickly beside their sister, and took him to his bedroom, furnished spa.r.s.ely always by his own wish that denied indulgence in anything much beyond a soldier's campaign quarters.

Dr. Anderson came, and went, shaking hands with Miss Mary in the lobby and his eyes most sternly bent upon the inside of his hat "Before morning at the very most," he said in his odd low-country voice. No more than that, and still it thundered at her soul like an infernal doom. Up she gathered her ap.r.o.n, up to her face, and fled in among her pots and pans, and loudly she moved among them to drown her lamentation.

Dr. Colin came later and prayed in the two languages over a figure on the bed, and then went home to write another sermon than the one already started. The room he left was silent for a while, till of a sudden the eyes of the General opened and he looked upon the sorry company.

"Bring me MacGibbon," said he in a voice extremely sensible.

Gilian ran up the street and fetched the old comrade, who put his hand upon the General's head.

"Dugald, do you ken me?" said he.

"Do I ken you?" said the General with an unpractised smile. "You're the laddie that burned the master's cane. I would know your voice if you were in any guise, and what masquerade is this that you should be so old? We're to be the first to move in the morning, under arms at scream of day.... Lord, but I'm tired! Bob, Bob, they're not thinking of us at home in the old place I'll warrant, and to-morrow we may be stricken corpses for the king without so much as Macintyre's stretching-board to give us a soger's chest and shoulders."

"Was there anything I could do, Dugald?" said the comrade, a ludicrous man with his paunch now far beyond the limit of the soldier's belt he used to buckle easily, wearing in a clownish notion of deference to this soldier's pa.s.sing a foolish small Highland bonnet he had donned in old campaigns.

"There was something running in my mind," said the man in the bed.

"I think I would be wanting you to take word home in case anything happened. I was thinking of--of--of--what was her name, now? You know the one I mean--her ladyship in Glen Shira. Am I not stupid to forget it? that's the worst of the bottle! What was her name, now?...

_Battalion will form an hollow square_.... The name, the name, what was it?... _On the center companies, 'kwards wheel_.... I'm wearied to the marrow of my bones, all but the right arm, that's like a feather, that's like a... _By the right angle of the front face; sub-divisions to the right and left half wheel. Re-form the square. Hall! Dress!_... What's that piper doing out there? MacVurich, come in! This is not a reel at a Skye wedding.... Let me see, I have the name on the tip of my tongue--what could it be, now? _Steady, men!_"

The door of the chamber was pushed in a little, and to Gilian's mouth his heart rose up at the manifestation, for what was this with no footstep on the wooden stair? About him he felt of a sudden cold airs waft, and the door ajar with no one entering glued his gaze upon its panels. The others in the room had not perceived it. Miss Mary, grown of a sudden plain and old, looked up in the Cornal's face, craving there for something for the ease of sorrow, as if he that had wandered so far and seen the Enemy so often and so ugly had some secret to share with her whereby this ancient trouble could be marred. There she found no consolation. No magician but only the brother looked over an untidy scarf and a limp high collar at the delirious man in bed. The Paymaster stood at the window frowning out upon the street; MacGibbon coughed in short dry jerky coughs, patted with a bony hand upon the coverlet, turned his head away. A stillness that was like a swoon came over all.

"Is that you, mother?" It was the General who broke the quiet, and his eyes were on his sister. A flush had fallen like a sunset on his face, his eyes were very clear and full, and, with his shaven cheeks, he might in the mitigate light of the chamber have been a lad new waked from an unpleasant dream. His sister put her head upon the pillow beside him and an arm about his shoulders.

"Oh, Dugald, Dugald!" said she, "it is not mother yet, but only Mary."

And the bedstead shook with the stress of her grief.

"Mary, is it?" said he, shutting his eyes again. "What are you laughing at? I was not up there at all; I never saw her to-day, upon my word; I was just giving Black George an exercise no further than the Boshang Gate.... I'm saying, though, you need not let on about it to Colin...

Colin, Colin, Colin, I wish we were home; the leaf must be fine and green upon Dunchuach.... They're over the river at Aldea Tajarda, and we push on to Cieudada.... What's that, Mackay? let go the girl! And you the Highland gentleman! _Lo sien--sien--siento mucho, Senora_."

"I am at your shoulder, Dugald, do you not know me?" asked the Cornal, gently putting his sister aside. His brother looked and smiled again, but did not seem to see him.

"What was her name? and I'll send her my love and duty, for, man, between us, I was fond of her,... There was a song she had:

The Rover went a-roving far upon the foreign seas, Oh, hail to thee, my dear, and fare-ye-weel.

Only it was in the Gaelic she sung it"

His voice, that was very weak and thin now, cracked, and no sound came though his lips moved.

Miss Mary took a cup and wet his lips. He seemed to think it a Communion, for again he shut his eyes, and "G.o.d," said he, "I am a sinful man to be sitting at Thy tables, but Thou knowest the soldier's trade, the soldier's sacrifice, and Thou art ready to forgive."

And still Gilian was in his bewilderment and fear about the open door.

Had anything come in that was there beside them at the bed? Down in the kitchen Peggy poked the fire with less than her customary vigour, but between her cheerful and worldly occupation and this doleful room, felt Gilian, lay a s.p.a.ce--a stairway full of dreads. All the stories he had heard of Death personified came to him fast upon each other, and they are numerous about winter fires in the Highland glens. He could fancy almost that he saw the plaided spectre by the bedside, arms akimbo, smiling ghastly, waiting till his prey was done with earthly conversation. It was horrible to be the only one in that chamber to know of the terrific presence that had entered at the door, and the boy's mouth parched with old, remote, unreasonable fears.

They did not disappear, those childish terrors, even when a kitten moved across the floor and began to toy with the vallance of the bed, explaining at once the door's opening. For might not the kitten, he thought, be more than Peggy's foundling be the other Thing disguised?

He watched its gambols at the feet of that distressed household, watched its pawing at the fringe, turning round upon itself in playfulness, emblem surely of the cruel heedlessness of nature.

MacGibbon moved to the window and stood beside the Paymaster, saying no word, but looking out at the vacant street, its causeway still shining with the rain. They were turning their backs, as it were, on a sorrow irremediable. Miss Mary and the Cornal stood alone by the dying man. He lay like a log but that his left hand played restlessly on the coverlet, long in the fingers, sinewy at the wrist. Miss Mary took it in hers and put palm to palm, and caressed the back with her other hand with an overflowing of affection that murmured at her throat.

And now that MacGibbon did not see and the Cornal had blurred eyes upon his brother's boyish countenance, she felt free to caress, and she laid the poor hand against her cheek and coyly kissed it.

The General turned his look upon her wet face with a moment's comprehension. "Tuts! never mind, Mary, my dear," said he, "it might have been with Jamie yonder on the field, and there--there you have a son--in a manner--left to comfort you." Then he began to wander anew. "A son," said he, "a son. Whose son? Turner threw our sonlessness in our Jock's face, but it was in my mind there was a boy somewhere we expected something of."

Miss Mary beckoned on Gilian to come forward to the bedside. He rose from the chair he sat on in the farthest corner with his dreads and faltered over.

"What boy's this?" said the General, looking at him with surmising eyes.

"He puts me in mind of--of--of--of an old tale somewhere with a sunny day in it. Nan! Nan! Nan!--that's the name. I knew I would come on it, for the sound of it was always like a sunny day in Portugal or Spain--_He estado en Espana_."

"This is the boy, Dugald," said Miss Mary; "this is just our Gilian."

"I see that. I know him finely," said the General, turning upon him a roving melancholy eye: "Jock's recruit.... Did you get back from your walk, my young lad? I never could fathom you, but perhaps you have your parts.... Well, well... what are ye dreaming on the day?... Eh? Ha! ha!

ha! Aye dreaming, that was you; you'll be dreaming next that the la.s.sie likes you. Mind, she jilted Jock, she jilted Colin, she jilted me; were we not the born idiots? yet still-and-on.... Sixty miles in twenty-four hours; good marching, lads, good marching, for half-starved men, and not the true heather-bred at that."

The voice was becoming weaker in every sentence, the flush was paling on the countenance. Standing by the bedside, the Cornal looked upon his brother with a most rueful visage, his face hoved up with tears.

"This beats all!" said he, and he turned and went beside the men at the window, leaving Miss Mary caressing still at the hand upon the coverlet, and with an arm about the boy.

"He was a strong, fine, wiry man in his time," said MacGibbon, looking over his shoulder at this end of a stormy life. "I mind him at Talavera; I think he was at his very best there."

The Paymaster looked, too, at the figure upon the bed, looked with a bent head, under lowered eyebrows, his lip and chin brown with snuffy tears.

"At sixteen he threw the cabar against the champion of the three shires, and though he was a sober man a bottle was neither here nor there with him," said the Cornal.

Miss Mary was upon her knees.

"The batteries are to open fire on San Vincent; seven eighteen-pounders and half a dozen howitzers are scarcely enough for that job. Tell Mackellar to move up two hundred yards farther on the right."

The General babbled again of his wars in a child's accent, that rose now and then stormily to the vehemence of the battle-field. "_Columns deploy on the right centre company.... No, no, close column on the rear of the Grenadiers_.... I wish, I wish.... Jock, Jock, where's your boy now? I cannot see him, I'm sore feared he's hiding in the sutler's vans. I knew him for a dreamer from the first day I saw him.... That's Williams gone and my step to Major come. G.o.d sain him! we could have better spared another man.... _Halt, dress!_"

He opened his eyes again and they fell upon Gilian. "You mind me of a boy I once knew," said he. "Poor boy, poor boy, what a pity of you! My sister Mary would have liked you. I think we never gave her her due, and indeed she had a generous hand."

"Here she's at your side, dear Dugald," said his sister, and her head went down upon his breast.

"So she is," said he, arousing to the fact; "I might be sure she would be there!" He disengaged the hand she had in hers, and wearily placed it for a moment on her hair with an awkward effort at fondling. "Are you tired, my dear?" he said, repeating it in the Gaelic. "It's a dreich dreich dying on a feather bed." He smiled once more feebly, and Gilian screamed, for the kitten had touched him on the leg.

"Go downstairs, this is no place for you, my dear," said Miss Mary; and he went willingly, hearing a stertorous breathing in the bed behind him.